A number of substituted hexitols, such as dianhydrogalactitol, have pharmacological activities. In particular, dianhydrogalactitol has been suggested for use in chemotherapy, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 7,157,059 to Nielsen et al., incorporated herein by this reference.
However, current methods of synthesis of such substituted hexitols, such as dianhydrogalactitol, are inefficient, and improved methods of synthesis of these substituted hexitols are required in order to provide larger quantities of these compounds for clinical use.
There is a particular need to be able to scale up these processes to produce large quantities of these substituted hexitols for pharmacological use and for the preparation of pharmaceutical compositions.